#16 - Art may make the world more beautiful, but one should

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[Stretchpass]

Hello,
I correctly identified C as the right answer, but I was torn between C and A, and would like to know why A is wrong, because I often see answer choices like this and am tempted by them, so establishing a pattern of why it's wrong would be great moving forward.
Here's what I figured: C directly addresses the main reason for supporting the argument, that perhaps other jobs also provide wages based on subjective evaluation. This clearly weakens the argument. However, why is it not logical for me to point out a flaw in the conclusion? Based on the premises, the conclusion establishes that you should choose a different career because payment is based on subjective criteria. Maybe the flaw is that it is wrong or insufficiently supported to base a career decision solely on compensation?
I guess what I'm trying to figure out with this question is whether it could ever be possible for the flaw to be located in the conclusion. Is it just a distraction? Must I find the flaw in the premise or the reasoning that supports the conclusion? Is it possible that the wording of A could be such that it could have been the correct answer?

I really appreciate it!

[James Finch]

Hi Stretch,

This is one of those very tricky questions with a very attractive wrong answer choice. Here, it requires a precise reading of the language to understand why (A) would be incorrect. As you note, (C) directly relates to an assumption being made in the stimulus, with all the language matching up properly. (A), however, is dealing with a related but different concept than the stimulus: how much a profession pays, presumably in aggregate (think annual salary), versus the conditions of payment (payment being contingent on a subjective evaluation of the work). Just because there are times when nobody likes a piece of art and won't buy it doesn't mean that its artist doesn't make a ton of money overall. It's just that it's a variable, potentially feast-or-famine situation rather than a guaranteed salary. We have no idea how much a career in art pays, nor how an artist's earnings would compare to other careers. So (A) actually requires an additional assumption on our part, that a career in art doesn't pay well, to be correct, while (C) doesn't need that extra help.

Hope this clears things up!

[Kennedv_]

I was also torn between A and C and ended up choosing A and after reading your explanation I can't believe I missed the "how much"

Anyways, like you said we don't know how much a career in art pays nor how it compares to other careers. . . I am having trouble understanding how C is different. How do we know that other careers use subjective evaluation? My thought process was that we don't know that and would need to make an unwarranted assumption.

Thanks in advance!

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Kennedv_!

The author made an unwarranted assumption in assuming that one's pay in other professions does NOT involve a certain degree of subjective evaluation. That's why answer choice (C) describes this flaw. It tells us that the author overlooked the possibility that there might be a certain degree of subjective evaluation in other professions as well. We're not assuming that there IS a degree of subjective evaluation in other professions; we're just stating that the author was unwarranted in assuming that there is NOT a degree of subjective evaluation in other professions.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[Henry Z]

Can you talk about why (E) is wrong?

I eliminated (C) because the stimulus says an artist's pay is "determined by" subjective evaluation, which sounds pretty strong. I thought it meant that the "subjective evaluation" was the biggest, if not the only, factor. Then (C) says the author neglects that anyone's pay "involves a certain degree of subjective evaluation", which sounds so weak that I thought even if it was true, it wouldn't do much harm to the argument, because the author is against the pay being totally "determined" by something, not the paying factoring in something.

[Adam Tyson]

A good answer to any Flaw in the Reasoning question must have two essential characteristics, Henry Z: it must be 1) true (meaning it accurately describes something that happened in the argument) and 2) relevant (meaning that it would, if true, be a problem for the argument, showing that the author did something wrong).

Answer E fails that first test. The argument did not treat any criterion as if it had to be satisfied for a career to be good. It's more like it determined a criterion which makes a job no good (subjective evaluation being that criterion). I suppose you could say, though, that the criterion that must be satisfied in order for a job to be good is "no subjective evaluation."

But then the rest of the answer still isn't true, because the argument does not treat that criterion as sufficient to ensure a job is good. In other words, the author never said that if there is no subjective evaluation, then the job will be good.

Since answer E describes something that the argument didn't do, we don't need to worry about that second test of relevance. Failing the first test is enough to prove that it's a wrong answer!